The present invention, in general, relates to a brush head or broom for sweeping dirt on a surface. The invention relates specifically to a brush head or broom with sweeping elements consisting of hair-like elements, also called bristle filaments, collected in groups.
In general, a broom is a tool used to clean up a surface by sweeping the dirt into a dustpan or dustbin. A conventional broom comprises a brush head, a broom stick and sweeping elements positioned on the brush head. Usually, a sweeping element is a plurality of hair-like elements (bristles) and the broom stick is fixed at a particular position on top of the brush head, and the sweeping elements protrude from the bottom of the brush head. Generally, these sweeping elements are made of a flexible material.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional broom (prior art). The broom (100) comprises a broom stick (not shown), a brush head (102) and flexible sweeping elements (104). The broom stick is to be attached to a top end of the brush head (102) and the flexible sweeping elements (104) are positioned on the brush head (102). Also, the sweeping elements protrude from the bottom end of the brush head (102) in order to contact the surface during sweeping. The sweeping elements can be groups of flexible hair-like elements.
Prior art brooms generally contain groups of flexible hair-like elements that are collected in groups by way of gluing or threading a ring upon the hair-like elements. A brush head can then be moulded around the hair-like elements. The moulding process allows positioning of hair-like elements in groups in a mould, thereby eliminating the need to insert the hair-like elements into the holes or grooves of the brush head. However, a problem with prior art brooms, where the sweeping elements are groups of flexible hair-like elements, is that some of the hair-like elements in the individual sweeping elements loosen when the broom is used, especially center hairs in each individual sweeping element have the tendency to fall off the broom during use. In other words, during the moulding of a brush head, each bristle positioned on the outer boundary of the group is bonded all around with the moulding material, whereas bristles in the inner section of the group are loosely bound as compared with those on the periphery of the group. Therefore, the group keeps losing bristles from the inner section over a period of use.
Another problem with prior art brooms is that dirt can hide in cracks and holes around the hairs in the sweeping elements and in cracks and holes between individual mouldings. Thus, there is a need for a better brush head-making method. In particular there is a need for a better way of producing hygienic or even super hygienic brush heads.
US 2010/0117440 discloses a brush manufacturing machine comprising two injection moulding steps. The bristle bundles are profiled and the ends cut to the same length before the bristle bundles are fused at the one end. A material is injection moulded around the fused end of the bristle bundles to form a thin-walled plate as bristle carrier. A second moulding around the bristle carriers results in a brush head being formed.
The drawbacks of US 2010/0117440 is that when the melting is accomplished the melting unit may accidentally pull out threads from the bristle filaments or pull up the whole sweeping element from the cardboard that they are positioned in when the melting is finished and the melting unit is lifted up. Another drawback is that all the individual bristle filaments might not be fused together completely or that the melted end is being over-melted.
An object of the present invention is to provide an alternative brush head manufacturing method that solves the above mentioned hygiene problems.